Barclays Wealth Hires former UBS branch manager

Barclays Wealth has recruited Linda Willis Eydt as the regional manager for its Atlanta office.

Eydt comes from UBS, where she spent two and a half years as the branch manager in the firm’s Atlanta office overseeing more than130 advisors and support staff. Prior to that she spent three years at Bear Stearns where she was responsible for overseeing branch managers in the private client services division.

Barclays is planning to triple its number of advisors in Atlanta, according to a firm spokeswoman, but she would not disclose how many advisors currently work in that office.

Barclays currently has 250 advisors in the Americas. It added more than 50 advisors in 2009 and plans to add more than 100 this year, according to the firm, which is a unit of Barclays PLC.

Eydt is the latest in a line of branch managers who have recently left the wirehouses following major restructuring of the branch and complex management systems at both UBS and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which is a joint venture of Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.